@techreport{NBERw17306,
 title = "A Political Theory of Populism",
 author = "Daron Acemoglu and Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "17306",
 year = "2011",
 month = "August",
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w17306",
 abstract = {When voters fear that politicians may have a right-wing bias or that they may be influenced or corrupted by the rich elite, signals of true left-wing conviction are valuable. As a consequence, even a moderate politician seeking reelection chooses “populist’ policies - i.e., policies to the left of the median voter - as a way of signaling that he is not from the right. Truly right-wing politicians respond by choosing more moderate, or even left-of-center policies. This populist bias of policy is greater when the value of remaining in office is higher for the politician; when there is greater polarization between the policy preferences of the median voter and right-wing politicians; when politicians are indeed more likely to have a hidden right-wing agenda; when there is an intermediate amount of noise in the information that voters receive; when politicians are more forward-looking; and when there is greater uncertainty about the type of the incumbent. We show that similar results apply when some politicians can be corrupted or influenced through other non-electoral means by the rich elite. We also show that ‘soft term limits’ may exacerbate, rather than reduce, the populist bias of policies.},
}